With Ted Hughes set to be honoured in Poets’ Corner, his daughter dismisses the idea that he abandoned her mother

Westminster Abbey, where the memorial service for my father, Ted Hughes, was held after his death in October 1998, will be honouring him in Poets’ Corner, it was announced last week. His name will be carved into a stone in the abbey, just as it was carved into a memorial stone on Dartmoor — and I am overjoyed for him. My joy, however, is tempered by sorrow that my brother, Nicholas, will never see it because almost exactly a year ago he took his own life.

This momentous recognition for my father has brought into sharp focus the events that shaped his life.Much has been written about him — some of it fictionalised and some distorted — since my mother, Sylvia Plath, committed suicide on